The rest of my first day was a lonely game of Follow the Leader.  Nobody knows who you are, but everybody knows you’re a new arrival because of how you’re dressed.  The only people wearing the shoes and off-color clothes like the ones I had are new inmates, or inmates who were just released from “the hole”…and obviously, they’re known by everyone.  So in a way, you’re wearing a sign around your neck identifying you as a newcomer (unless you’ve been transferred, in which case somebody in the new facility has heard about you in advance through the grapevine).  Being singled out as new is both a good and a bad thing.  You’re generally ignored, which is lonely but gives you time to get your balance.  And, as a newcomer, provided you try to stay the hell out of everyone’s way, you’re given the benefit of the doubt if you do something stupid or disrespect someone unknowingly.  Screw up, and you’ll get a warning and an explanation.  Provided you take both politely and with an apology, there is no harm and no foul.

I hung around my bunk for an hour or so, taking occasional walks through the halls and reading material on the bulletin board.  I had showered that morning at home, and didn’t have any toiletries to use or clean clothes to change into, so there wasn’t much else for me to do.  Around 3pm they had mail call, which was a bunch of inmates crammed into one of the larger TV room/Classrooms as a CO shouted out names.  I knew I wasn’t going to get any mail yet, but I watched anyway just to get the feel of how it worked, and to kill time.

Back in my bunk a bit later, I heard a CO shout “Stand Up!”  Everybody else stood and kept quiet, so I figured that’s what I was supposed to do too.  Sure, enough, this was my first encounter with the daily “Stand-Up Count.”  At this time every day, every inmate is to be counted and accounted for, standing in his living area.  The only exceptions are inmates who are working at their assigned job during that time, and they are also counted standing but by their work CO instead.  If the numbers don’t add up, they recount.  If they STILL don’t add up, they come through with their inmate books and do a true census, one inmate at a time, until they figure out who is missing.  If you’re not in your living area, or if you move from that area before the count is cleared, you could be in for a heap of trouble, ranging from sanctions and extra duty to going to the hole for who knows how long.  You don’t screw with a stand-up count.  There are other counts during the night, but they’re not stand-up.  But this count, once a day (with an extra stand-up count on weekends and holidays around 10:30am), is deadly serious with the staff.

Of course, it depends on the staff and the inmate.  Sometimes an inmate might be asleep, and if he doesn’t wake up and stand in time, he might get in trouble, or he might just get a warning of some kind.  You’d expect an inmate’s bunkmate would watch his back and get him up, but sometimes they hate each other, or sometimes the bunkmate is such a piece of crap that he won’t do anything to help ANYBODY.  But you just never knew.  One hard-ass CO was famous for severe punishment when somebody messed up his count.  He came through one day, and saw an inmate was sleeping in the top bunk.  He kicked the bed to wake him up, moving on with the count.  I assume he planned to come back and yank the inmate out afterward.  But this inmate woke with such a start that as he tried to climb down from the top bunk he lost his footing (there is no easy way to climb down) and fell face first onto the floor in a terrible crash of body, metal chair, and other items.  The CO finished this section of the count and walked over to find the inmate groggily trying to recover.  All the CO could manage that day was a semi-sympathetic “Dude, are you okay?”   Seeing the inmate wasn’t bleeding, he moved on.  I guess busting your ass (or face), to the amusement of the CO and other inmates, is sometimes punishment enough.

Dinner came next.  I was pleasantly surprised that the food was not as terrible as I had feared.  The portions of protein were somewhat limited, but there was plenty of lettuce and some other items on the salad bar, water or soda from the dispenser, a dessert item, and a side item.   Desserts or other limited items could be traded among the inmates, or simply given away to friends if you didn’t want them (I don’t like bananas, so those I always gave away freely).  Unfortunately, the quality and quantity of food served would decline as I continued by prison experience.  I was told by a staff member late in my sentence that the amount of money spent per inmate per day on food within the Bureau of Prisons had dropped from over $3.25 to close to $1.00 between when I arrived and when I went home.  Believe me, you could tell the difference.  Growing populations, budget limitations, and rising food costs took a heavy toll.  In fact, as more and more crimes became Federal crimes, the rapid growth in population would take a toll on just about every aspect of prison life by the time I left.

Overall, my first day was tolerable, and helped me accept that I could survive this experience without killing myself or being killed by others.  But the night had one last surprise for me.  This was early November, in the Pennsylvania countryside, so it was bound to get quite cold at night.  Lucky me, as it turned out, the heat in our living quarters had not been working for a day or so (I felt cold all day but figured it was just me).  So we had to sleep with no heat.  For most inmates this wasn’t a huge problem; they just slept with long johns and maybe two pairs of socks.  Not me!  I didn’t have any long johns yet, and the one pair of socks I had been given were old, thin, and had holes in them.  Even my blanket was thinner (and you only get one blanket).  So I had the pleasure of spending my first night in prison freezing my ass off, listening to the sounds of 60 men sleeping in the same room.  I did get some sleep, in between the snoring and the farting and the coughing…and the chattering of my teeth.  A nice reminder, if nothing else, that there would be surprises waiting around every corner!

(Watch for new stories in the future)